Читать книгу David Dunne - Maniates Belle Kanaris - Страница 2

Across lots to the Brumble farm came the dusty apparition of a boy, a tousle-headed, freckle-faced, gaunt-eyed little fellow, clad in a sort of combination suit fashioned from a pair of overalls and a woman’s shirtwaist. In search of “Miss M’ri,” he looked into the kitchen, the henhouse, the dairy, and the flower garden. Not finding her in any of these accustomed places, he stood still in perplexity.

“Miss M’ri!” rang out his youthful, vibrant treble.

There was a note of promise in the pleasant voice that came back in subterranean response.

“Here, David, in the cellar.”

The lad set down the tin pail he was carrying and eagerly sped to the cellar. His fondest hopes were realized. M’ri Brumble, thirty odd years of age, blue of eye, slightly gray of hair, and sweet of heart, was lifting the cover from the ice-cream freezer.

“Well, David Dunne, you came in the nick of time,” she said, looking up with kindly eyes. “It’s just frozen. I’ll dish you up some now, if you will run up to the pantry and fetch two saucers–biggest you can find.”

Fleetly David footed the stairs and returned with two soup plates.

“These were the handiest,” he explained apologetically as he handed them to her.

“Just the thing,” promptly reassured M’ri, transferring a heaping ladle of yellow cream to one of the plates. “Easy to eat out of, too.”

“My, but you are giving me a whole lot,” he said, watching her approvingly and encouragingly. “I hope you ain’t robbing yourself.”

“Oh, no; I always make plenty,” she replied, dishing a smaller portion for herself. “Here’s enough for our dinner and some for you to carry home to your mother.”

“I haven’t had any since last Fourth of July,” he observed in plaintive reminiscence as they went upstairs.

“Why, David Dunne, how you talk! You just come over here whenever you feel like eating ice cream, and I’ll make you some. It’s no trouble.”

They sat down on the west, vine-clad porch to enjoy their feast in leisure and shade. M’ri had never lost her childish appreciation of the delicacy, and to David the partaking thereof was little short of ecstasy. He lingered longingly over the repast, and when the soup plate would admit of no more scraping he came back with a sigh to sordid cares.

“Mother couldn’t get the washing done no-ways to-day. She ain’t feeling well, but you can have the clothes to-morrow, sure. She sent you some sorghum,” pointing to the pail.

M’ri took the donation into the kitchen. When she brought back the pail it was filled with eggs. Not to send something in return would have been an unpardonable breach of country etiquette.

“Your mother said your hens weren’t laying,” she said.

The boy’s eyes brightened.

“Thank you, Miss M’ri; these will come in good. Our hens won’t lay nor set. Mother says they have formed a union. But I ’most forgot to tell you–when I came past Winterses, Ziny told me to ask you to come over as soon as you could.”

“I suppose Zine has got one of her low spells,” said Barnabas Brumble, who had just come up from the barn. “Most likely Bill’s bin gittin’ tight agin. He–”

“Oh, no!” interrupted his sister hastily. “Bill has quit drinking.”

“Bill’s allers a-quittin’. Trouble with Bill is, he can’t stay quit. I see him yesterday comin’ down the road zig-zaggin’ like a rail fence. Fust she knows, she’ll hev to be takin’ washin’ to support him. Sometimes I think ’t would be a good idee to let him git sent over the road onct. Mebby ’t would learn him a lesson–”

He stopped short, noticing the significant look in M’ri’s eyes and the two patches of color spreading over David’s thin cheeks. He recalled that four years ago the boy’s father had died in state prison.

“You’d better go right over to Zine’s,” he added abruptly.

“I’ll wait till after dinner. We’ll have it early.”

“Hev it now,” suggested Barnabas.

“Now!” ejaculated David. “It’s only half-past ten.”

“I could eat it now jest as well as I could at twelve,” argued the philosophical Barnabas. “Jest as leaves as not.”

There were no iron-clad rules in this comfortable household, especially when Pennyroyal, the help, was away.

“All right,” assented M’ri with alacrity. “If I am going to do anything, I like to do it right off quick and get it over with. You stay, David, if you can eat dinner so early.”

“Yes, I can,” he assured her, recalling his scanty breakfast and the freezer of cream that was to furnish the dessert. “I’ll help you get it, Miss M’ri.”

He brought a pail of water from the well, filled the teakettle, and then pared the potatoes for her.

“When will Jud and Janey get their dinner?” he asked Barnabas.

“They kerried their dinner to-day. The scholars air goin’ to hev a picnic down to Spicely’s grove. How comes it you ain’t to school, Dave?”

“I have to help my mother with the washing,” he replied, a slow flush coming to his face. “She ain’t strong enough to do it alone.”

“What on airth kin you do about a washin’, Dave?”

“I can draw the water, turn the wringer, hang up the clothes, empty the tubs, fetch and carry the washings, and mop.”

Barnabas puffed fiercely at his pipe for a moment.

“You’re a good boy, Dave, a mighty good boy. I don’t know what your ma would do without you. I hed to leave school when I wa’n’t as old as you, and git out and hustle so the younger children could git eddicated. By the time I wuz foot-loose from farm work, I wuz too old to git any larnin’. You’d orter manage someway, though, to git eddicated.”

“Mother’s taught me to read and write and spell. When I get old enough to work for good wages I can go into town to the night school.”

In a short time M’ri had cooked a dinner that would have tempted less hearty appetites than those possessed by her brother and David.

“You ain’t what might be called a delikit feeder, Dave,” remarked Barnabas, as he replenished the boy’s plate for the third time. “You’re so lean I don’t see where you put it all.”

David might have responded that the vacuum was due to the fact that his breakfast had consisted of a piece of bread and his last night’s supper of a dish of soup, but the Dunne pride inclined to reservation on family and personal matters. He speared another small potato and paused, with fork suspended between mouth and plate.

“Mother says she thinks I am hollow inside like a stovepipe.”

“Well, I dunno. Stovepipes git filled sometimes,” ruminated his host.

“Leave room for the ice cream, David,” cautioned M’ri, as she descended to the cellar.

The lad’s eyes brightened as he beheld the golden pyramid. Another period of lingering bliss, and then with a sigh of mingled content and regret, David rose from the table.

“Want me to hook up for you, Mr. Brumble?” he asked, moved to show his gratitude for the hospitality extended.

“Why, yes, Dave; wish you would. My back is sorter lame to-day. Land o’ livin’,” he commented after David had gone to the barn, “but that boy swallered them potaters like they wuz so many pills!”

“Poor Mrs. Dunne!” sighed M’ri. “I am afraid it’s all she can do to keep a very small pot boiling. I am glad she sent the sorghum, so I could have an excuse for sending the eggs.”

“She hain’t poor so long as she hez a young sprout like Dave a-growin’ up. We used to call Peter Dunne ‘Old Hickory,’ but Dave, he’s second-growth hickory. He’s the kind to bend and not break. Jest you wait till he’s seasoned onct.”

After she had packed a pail of ice cream for David, gathered some flowers for Ziny, and made out a memorandum of supplies for Barnabas to get in town, M’ri set out on her errand of mercy.

The “hooking up” accomplished, David, laden with a tin pail in each hand and carrying in his pocket a drawing of black tea for his mother to sample, made his way through sheep-dotted pastures to Beechum’s woods, and thence along the bank of the River Rood. Presently he spied a young man standing knee-deep in the stream in the patient pose peculiar to fishermen.

“Catch anything?” called David eagerly.

The man turned and came to shore. He wore rubber hip boots, dark trousers, a blue flannel shirt, and a wide-brimmed hat. His eyes, blue and straight-gazing, rested reminiscently upon the lad.

“No,” he replied calmly. “I didn’t intend to catch anything. What is your name?”

“David Dunne.”

The man meditated.

“You must be about twelve years old.”

“How did you know?”

“I am a good guesser. What have you got in your pail?”

“Which one?”

“Both.”

“Thought you were a good guesser.”

The youth laughed.

“You’ll do, David. Let me think–where did you come from just now?”

“From Brumble’s.”

“It’s ice cream you’ve got in your pail,” he said assuredly.

“That’s just what it is!” cried the boy in astonishment, “and there’s eggs in the other pail.”

“Let’s have a look at the ice cream.”

David lifted the cover.

“It looks like butter,” declared the stranger.

“It don’t taste like butter,” was the indignant rejoinder. “Miss M’ri makes the best cream of any one in the country.”

“I knew that, my young friend, before you did. It’s a long time since I had any, though. Will you sell it to me, David? I will give you half a dollar for it.”

Half a dollar! His mother had to work all day to earn that amount. The ice cream was not his–not entirely. Miss M’ri had sent it to his mother. Still–

“’T will melt anyway before I get home,” he argued aloud and persuasively.

“Of course it will,” asserted the would-be purchaser.

David surrendered the pail, and after much protestation consented to receive the piece of money which the young man pressed upon him.

“You’ll have to help me eat it now; there’s no pleasure in eating ice cream alone.”

“We haven’t any spoons,” commented the boy dubiously.

“We will go to my house and eat it.”

“Where do you live?” asked David in surprise.

“Just around the bend of the river here.”

David’s freckles darkened. He didn’t like to be made game of by older people, for then there was no redress.

“There isn’t any house within two miles of here,” he said shortly.

“What’ll you bet? Half a dollar?”

“No,” replied David resolutely.

“Well, come and see.”

David followed his new acquaintance around the wooded bank. The river was full of surprises to-day. In midstream he saw what looked to him like a big raft supporting a small house.

“That’s my shanty boat,” explained the young man, as he shoved a rowboat from shore. “Jump in, my boy.”

“Do you live in it all the time?” asked David, watching with admiration the easy but forceful pull on the oars.

“No; I am on a little fishing and hunting expedition.”

“Can’t kill anything now,” said the boy, a derisive smile flickering over his features.

“I am not hunting to kill, my lad. I am hunting old scenes and memories of other days. I used to live about here. I ran away eight years ago when I was just your age.”

“What is your name?” asked David interestedly.

“Joe Forbes.”

“Oh,” was the eager rejoinder. “I know. You are Deacon Forbes’ wild son that ran away.”

“So that’s how I am known around here, is it? Well, I’ve come back, to settle up my father’s estate.”

“What did you run away for?” inquired David.

“Combination of too much stepmother and a roving spirit, I guess. Here we are.”

He sprang on the platform of the shanty boat and helped David on board. The boy inspected this novel house in wonder while his host set saucers and spoons on the table.

“Would you mind,” asked David in an embarrassed manner as he wistfully eyed the coveted luxury, “if I took my dishful home?”

“What’s the matter?” asked Forbes, his eyes twinkling. “Eaten too much already?”

“No; but you see my mother likes it and she hasn’t had any since last summer. I’d rather take mine to her.”

“There’s plenty left for your mother. I’ll put this pail in a bigger one and pack ice about it. Then it won’t melt.”

“But you paid me for it,” protested David.

“That’s all right. Your mother was pretty good to me when I was a boy. She dried my mop of hair for me once so my stepmother would not know I’d been in swimming. Tell her I sent the cream to her. Say, you were right about Miss M’ri making the best cream in the country. It used to be a chronic pastime with her. That’s how I guessed what you had when you said you came from there. Whenever there was a picnic or a surprise party in the country she always furnished the ice cream. Isn’t she married yet?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t she keep company with some lucky man?”

“No,” again denied the boy emphatically.

“What’s the matter? She used to be awfully pretty and sweet.”

“She is now, but she don’t want any man.”

“Well, now, David, that isn’t quite natural, you know. Why do you think she doesn’t want one?”

“I heard say she was crossed once.”

“Crossed, David? And what might that be?” asked Forbes in a delighted feint of perplexity.

“Disappointed in love, you know.”

“Yes; it all comes back now–the gossip of my boyhood days. She was going with a man when Barnabas’ wife died and left two children–one a baby–and Miss M’ri gave up her lover to do her duty by her brother’s family. So Barnabas never married again?”

“No; Miss M’ri keeps house and brings up Jud and Janey.”

“I remember Jud–mean little shaver. Janey must be the baby.”

“She’s eight now.”

“I remember you, David. You were a little toddler of four–all eyes. Your folks had a place right on the edge of town.”

“We left it when I was six years old and came out here,” informed David.

Forbes’ groping memory recalled the gossip that had reached him in the Far West. “Dunne went to prison,” he mused, “and the farm was mortgaged to defray the expenses of the trial.” He hastened back to a safer channel.

“Miss M’ri was foolish to spoil her life and the man’s for fancied duty,” he observed.

David bridled.

“Barnabas couldn’t go to school when he was a boy because he had to work so she and the other children could go. She’d ought to have stood by him.”

“I see you have a sense of duty, too. This county was always strong on duty. I suppose they’ve got it in for me because I ran away?”

“Mr. Brumble says it was a wise thing for you to do. Uncle Larimy says you were a brick of a boy. Miss Rhody says she had no worry about her woodpile getting low when you were here.”

“Poor Miss Rhody! Does she still live alone? And Uncle Larimy–is he uncle to the whole community? What fishing days I had with him! I must look him up and tell him all my adventures. I have planned a round of calls for to-night–Miss M’ri, Miss Rhody, Uncle Larimy–”

“Tell me about your adventures,” demanded David breathlessly.

He listened to a wondrous tale of western life, and never did narrator get into so close relation with his auditor as did this young ranchman with David Dunne.

“I must go home,” said the boy reluctantly when Joe had concluded.

“Come down to-morrow, David, and we’ll go fishing.”

“All right. Thank you, sir.”

With heart as light as air, David sped through the woods. He had found his Hero.